Davenport arrives on Thursday with a statement form and a question that makes Agnes put down her coffee.
“Did Mr. Musgrove invite you into the garage?”
“No.”
“Did he see you go in?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Then tell me what you actually did. From the moment you left the dining table.”
Agnes tells her. The garden door, the side entrance, the workbench, the food processor, the receipt in the bin. When she reaches for the paper, Davenport asks her to leave it on the clean sheet beneath it. She photographs it before collecting it.
I give her the text messages from my phone. Reading Take it with the detective beside me is different from sending it while my heart hammered in a parked car.
“You encouraged her to remove it,” Davenport says.
“Yes.”
“Has anyone else handled it?”
“Agnes showed it to me. I didn’t take it from her.”
She records that, then asks what led us to believe a purchase of walnut flour would identify Victor’s killer.
“It might connect the kitchen to the biscuit,” I say.
“It might. It may also document a fundraiser purchase. You’ve already told me people use the garage for donated supplies.”
I give her the list from Marina. She looks at the date and asks for permission to retain my copy.
Agnes tells her about the processor. Silver, probably Cuisinart. Something oily near the blade. She did not collect it, touch it, or know what it was.
“Good,” Davenport says. “Keep that distinction.”
“And the gloves?” Agnes asks.
“Dale has acknowledged owning the greenhouse pair. We have that information. Finding another pair at his home doesn’t tell us which pair, if any, handled food.”
Agnes presses her lips together. She has dressed for battle and found an inventory instead.
Davenport takes our separate accounts. She tells us she will put the new information before a judge with the other grounds for a search. Then she asks whether Dale said anything after dinner that Agnes has not yet reported.
“He said George made a mistake,” Agnes answers. “He wanted me to think helping afterward was love.”
“His exact words, if you can.”
Agnes gives them. Davenport writes slowly enough that nobody can mistake the questions for a conversation among friends.
After she leaves, Agnes stands at the sink without turning on the tap.
“Do you think I made it worse?”
“I don’t know.”
It is a miserable answer. It is the only one I have.
She turns on the water and washes the breakfast bowl she is holding. I check the oven instead of telling her she did the right thing. We cannot know that yet.
The warrant is authorized later that morning. We learn only that the search is underway. For the next several hours, my phone seems to move on the counter whenever a delivery truck passes.
I make a batch of sandwich rolls for the guests arriving tomorrow. Halfway through weighing the dough, the telephone rings. A woman wants to know whether the conservatory can be reserved for a private murder-mystery evening.
For a moment I think she has confused us with another business.
“No,” I say when she explains. “It can’t.”
“We wouldn’t use the actual name. It would be tasteful.”
I look at the wall beside the oven. There is a small dark mark where Victor’s chair scraped it on the morning he helped me reach a serving dish. He had offered without making a performance of it. I had forgotten until this second.
“He had a mother,” I say.
The woman falls silent.
“I’m going to end the call now.”
I hang up before she can apologize in a way that requires me to reassure her. Agnes has heard enough. She takes the pencil from the booking ledger and writes a note across the margin: No events connected to the death.
“We might need the money,” I say.
“We will find a different way to need it.”
At two, Davenport calls. The processor was not in the garage. The bin was empty and the work surface had been cleaned. Dale says the machine was borrowed and has been returned; he has supplied a name through his attorney.
“Does she believe him?” I ask after Agnes hangs up.
“She intends to check.”
“What about the receipt?”
“She’s contacting the shop. And the people on the supplies list.”
I look toward the conservatory. A missing machine feels like confirmation because I want it to. It also feels like a door closing in our faces.
Agnes takes an envelope from the drawer. Inside is the transcription Davenport left when she asked us about Victor’s last notebook entry. No original notebook. No handwriting for me to interpret. Just words printed on office paper.
D.M. has been stalling for weeks. He won’t admit it. Tonight, after dinner, I confront him.
I read to the end. Then I read the date above the entry.
“Why put it in the study?” I ask.
“To hide it.”
“From whom?”
“From the police.”
“Then why not take it away?”
Agnes’s hand stays on the envelope. It is a question so simple that I am embarrassed it took us this long to ask.
“If Dale hid it there,” I say, “he chose a room he knew you entered. You had just been reading George’s letter there. It wasn’t abandoned.”
“He may have intended to come back.”
“He came back several times before you found it.”
We consider the page. Dale’s name appears over and over. George’s initials. The land. The coming confrontation. Anyone reading it would arrive where we arrived.
“Maybe it wasn’t hidden from the police,” I say. “Maybe it was left for someone who would eventually show it to them.”
Agnes sits down.
“In George’s study.”
“With George’s papers.”
“Someone wanted the two stories together.”
I reach for my phone, then stop. It would be easy to call Marina and let her tell me whether the thought is sensible. Instead I write it down in the form of a question and send it to Davenport. There is no new fact, only a possibility I have been unwilling to consider.
Her reply arrives while I am dividing the last of the dough: Keep the source of each item separate. We are checking the notebook’s movements.
I put the phone away. Beside it lies the supplies list, crowded with names. I have underlined Dale’s. I draw a small mark beside the underline, then write: storage, not purchase established.
Agnes watches.
“You’re changing your mind.”
“I’m trying to leave room to.”
She looks at the third mug on the rack. Dale’s mug. She takes it down, washes it, and puts it in the cupboard.
“I can’t leave that there,” she says. “Not yet.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“He admitted helping hide Thomas. We don’t have to invite him for coffee while we work out the rest.”
She closes the cupboard. For the first time today, she looks relieved.
The rolls need another few minutes before baking. I put away the evidence copy and set the timer. Outside, a guest is trying to photograph an orchid through the conservatory glass. I open the ordinary door and tell her she can come inside.
She thanks me, takes her picture, and leaves without asking who died beside the plant. I am so grateful that I have to wait before following her back through the house.